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282Hegel and Marx on the Rabble and the Problem of Poverty in Modern SocietyIyyun 50 (1): 23-40. 2001.The problem of poverty and the emergence of a rabble (Pöbel) in modern society does not find any reasonable solution in Hegel's Philosophy of Right (henceforth PR). Some scholars have stressed how unusual this is for Hegel, claiming that it would have been uncharacteristic for him to leave a major, acknowledged problem of his system unsolved: "On no other occasion does Hegel leave a problem at that." The importance of this problem is not limited to the threat it poses to the sphere of ethical li…Read more
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275Descartes' MethodIn Lawrence Nolan (ed.), The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. pp. 508-513. 2016.
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269“When having too much Power is Harmful? - Spinoza on Political Luck”In Yitzhak Melamed & Hasana Sharp (eds.), Spinoza's Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. pp. 161-174. 2018.Spinoza’s celebrated doctrine of the conatus asserts that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being” (E3p6). Shortly thereafter Spinoza makes the further claim that the (human) mind strives to increase its power of acting (E3p12). This latter claim is commonly interpreted as asserting that human beings (and their associations) not only strive to persevere in their existence, but also always strive to increase their power. Spinoza’s justification for E3p12 …Read more
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265Between Reinhold and Fichte: August Ludwig Hülsen’s Contribution to the Emergence of German Idealism by Ezequiel L. PosesorskiJournal of the History of Philosophy 52 (2): 382-383. 2014.
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262The Metaphysics of Substance and the Metaphysics of Thought in SpinozaDissertation, Yale University. 2005.
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261Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thougth (Chinese version, 2023)Commercial Press. 2023.In this book, Yitzhak Y. Melamed offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza. Against Curley's influential reading, he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. Against the claim that it is a category mistake to consider things as properti…Read more
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253Review of Martin Lin, Being and Reason: An Essay on Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2019. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. April 1st, 2021.Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2021.
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242La Metafisica di Spinoza: Sostanza e PensieroMimesis Edizioni. 2020.This is an Italian translation of Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford UP, 2013).
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241Review of Don Garrett, Necessity and Nature in Spinoza (Oxford University Press, 2018). The Philosophical Review 129 (2020). (review)Philosophical Review 129 (3): 469-473. 2020.
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228Inherence and the Immanent Cause in SpinozaThe Leibniz Review 16 43-52. 2006.The article explains the nature of the immanent cause in Spinoza. It shows that immanent causation is a distinct genus of efficient causation, i.e., an efficient cause whose effect inheres in the cause.
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221Spinozian Model TheoryAdvances in Modern Logic 13 133-147. 2020.his paper is an excerpt from a larger project that aims to open a new pathway into Spinoza's Ethics by formally reconstructing an initial fragment of this text. The semantic backbone of the project is a custom-made Spinozian model theory that lays out some of the formal prerequisites for more ne-grained investigations into Spinoza's fundamental ontology and modal metaphysics. We implement Spinoza's theory of attributes using many-sorted models with a rich system of identity that allows us to cla…Read more
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215Spinoza’s Labyrinths: Essays on His MetaphysicsOxford University Press. forthcoming.Spinoza’s recognition of the unpredictable fortunes of individuals, explicable through the interplay between their intrinsic natures and their susceptibility to external causes, informs his account of political success and – what for him is the same thing – political virtue. Thus, a state may thrive because it has a good constitution (an internal feature), or because it was fortunate not to be surrounded by powerful enemies. Normally, however, it is the combination of both luck and internal q…Read more
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214Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance: The Substance‐Mode Relation as a Relation of Inherence and PredicationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (1): 17-82. 2008.In his groundbreaking work of 1969, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, Edwin Curley attacked the traditional understanding of the substance-mode relation in Spinoza, according to which modes inhere in substance. Curley argued that such an interpretation generates insurmountable problems, as had already been claimed by Pierre Bayle in his famous Dictionary entry on Spinoza. Instead of having modes inhere in substance Curley suggested that the modes’ dependence upon substance shoul…Read more
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212Review of Samuel Fleischacker, Divine Teaching and the Way of the World (Oxford University Press, 2011), Philosophical Review. Forthcoming. (review)Philosophical Review 151-154. 2016.
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193Spinoza and Leibniz on the Principle of Sufficient ReasonIn Michael Della Rocca & Fatema Amijee (eds.), The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A History, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.The early modern period was the natural historical habitat of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, i.e., the demand that everything must have a cause, or reason. It is in this period that the principle was explicitly articulated and named, and throughout the period we find numerous formulations and variants of the PSR and its closely related ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’ principle, which the early moderns inherited from medieval philosophy. Contemporary discussions of these principles were not restric…Read more
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183The Return to Nothingness: Hassidism and PhilosophyIn Tyron Goldschmidt & Daniel Rynolds (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy, Routledge. forthcoming.A proper and comprehensive study of the relationship between Hassidism and philosophy would require a volume of its own. In the limited space of this chapter, I shall focus on two crucial issues within the broader topic of Hassidism and philosophy. In the first part, I will study the Hassidic reception of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, widely perceived as the greatest work of Jewish philosophy, a work that was equally admired and derided as heretical from its very early dissemination in the…Read more
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182Review of Matthew Homan. Spinoza’s Epistemology through a Geometrical Lens. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. xv+256. (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 61 (2): 329-31. 2023.Like most, if not all, of his contemporaries, Spinoza never developed a full-fledged philosophy of mathematics. Still, his numerous remarks about mathematics attest not only to his deep interest in the subject (a point which is also confirmed by the significant presence of mathematical books in his library), but also to his quite elaborate and perhaps unique understanding of the nature of mathematics. At the very center of his thought about mathematics stands a paradox (or, at least, an apparent…Read more
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178Medieval but not ChristianAeon 9. 2022.In 1989, Cambridge University Press announced the publication of a new, three-volume book series: The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. The first volume – edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, and dedicated to logic and the philosophy of language – contained 15 medieval texts, of which 15 were composed by Christian authors. The second volume in the series, this time focusing on ethics and political philosophy, appeared in 2000. Seventeen of the 17 texts included in…Read more
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177Spinoza: Une lecture d'aristote (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (1): 126-127. 2011.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spinoza: Une Lecture d'AristoteYitzhak MelamedFrédéric Manzini. Spinoza: Une Lecture d'Aristote. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009. Pp. 334. Paper, $39.95.The occasion that prompted the current study was the discovery of a tiny typo in the text of Spinoza's Cogitata Metaphysica—the appendix to his 1663 book, Descartes' Principle of Philosophy. As it turned out, this typo, a reference to Book XI instead of Book…Read more
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174Salomon Maimon and the rise of spinozism in German idealismJournal of the History of Philosophy 42 (1): 67-96. 2004.In this paper I explore one issue in the history of German Idealism which has been widely neglected in the existing literature. I argue that Salomon Maimon was the first to suggest that Spinoza's pantheism was a radical religious (or 'acosmistic') view rather than atheism. Following a discussion of the historical context of Maimon's engagement with Spinoza, I point out the main Spinozistic element of Maimon 's philosophy: the view of God as the material cause of the world, or as the subject in w…Read more
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171Spinoza and Crescas on ModalityIn Yitzhak Melamed & Samuel Newlands (eds.), Modality: A History, Oxford University Press. 2024.The first section of the chapter will address the philosophy of modality among Spinoza’s medieval Jewish predecessors, and, primarily, in Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11), a bold and original, anti-Aristotelian philosopher. This section should both complement the discussion of modality in medieval Christian and Islamic philosophy in the previous chapters of this volume and provide some lesser-known historical background to Spinoza’s own engagement with modal philosophy. Following a section on Spin…Read more
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166GodIn Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel offers the following verdict on Spinoza’s ontology: “According to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore, the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God” (Hegel 1995, vol. 3, 281-2). It is not easy to dismiss Hegel’s grand pronouncement, since Spinoza indeed clearly affirms: “whatever is, is in God” (E1p15). Crocodiles, porcupines (and your thoughts about cr…Read more
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163ExistenceIn Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.The distinction between essence (essentia) and existence (existentia) plays a major role in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Although the distinction did not originate with Avicenna, it is primarily through Avicenna’s influence that it became widespread, if not ubiquitous, in both Jewish and Christian medieval philosophy (e.g., Ogden 2021). Spinoza was clearly familiar with this important distinction through his study of Maimonides, Crescas, and Descartes, and it is particularly useful to examine Spinoza…Read more
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155The Political Theology of Salomon MaimonIn Jason Maurice Yonover & Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought across the Long Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.The term ‘Political Theology’ was not coined in the twentieth century. I am not absolutely sure about who was the first to introduce the term. As we shall shortly see, Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) used the term as part of the title to one of the chapters of his 1792/3 Lebensgeschichte, and it is the primary aim of my chapter to explain his understanding of the term. The idea that views about the divine (‘theology’) – true or false – could have an important role in establishing (or undermining) p…Read more
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151Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise': A Critical Guide (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2010.Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in 1670 and immediately provoked huge debate. Its main goal was to claim that the freedom of philosophizing can be allowed in a free republic and that it cannot be abolished without also destroying the peace and piety of that republic. Spinoza criticizes the traditional claims of revelation and offers a social contract theory in which he praises democracy as the most natural form of government. This Critical Guide presents essays…Read more
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140ImmanenceIn Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.Responding to Henry Oldenburg’s request to clarify his views about the relation between God and Nature (Ep. 71), Spinoza writes: “I favor an opinion concerning God and Nature far different from the one Modern Christians usually defend. For I maintain that God is, as they say, the immanent, but not the transitive, cause of all things” (Ep. 73 (IV/307)). In the Ethics, Spinoza does not define the notion of causa immanens, but we can easily retrieve the precise meaning of the term by scrutinizing E…Read more
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19th Century Philosophy |
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